Welcome to my words

And a thank you for taking your time to read material from this Site – Updated January 2023

… well, my words together with the words of other poets and the like … poems that for one reason or another have come to my attention. The banner image on this Home Page is sunlight on gum trees against a clear blue Australian sky.

This Site shares some of my poems as well as poetry commentary on poems from other poets. It replaces my ‘Out Of The Blue’ Blogger Site used for the same purpose covering the period from March 2011 to February 2013.

This Site was active from 5 April 2011 to 25 December 2022 and in total there are 479 Posts. It remains an open WordPress Website and is Ad free.

My work is free-to-air but please acknowledge the source in any reference.

Comments can still be sent to – mywordinyourear@gmail.com

I have a self-published E-Book version of my poetry …  ‘My Word in Your Ear’ – Selected Poems 2001 – 2015′ – EBook – My Word in Your Ear

Also, I have an Ebook version of a small book of personal poems which can be referenced from within this Site for anyone interested … the link.

Below is an Index in chronological order containing the links to the Posts on this Site … Richard Scutter (Jan 2023) …

• Well, the time has come … the Richard said …
• The Christmas Gift …
• December 23 – Celebration of a birthday
• Along by merry Christmas time – Henry Lawson – Comments
• The Prisoner – Alexander Pushkin
• My Papa’s Waltz – Theodore Roethke – Comments
• In the Park – Gwen Harwood – Analysis
• Nothing Doing – a response to the wanton Ukraine destruction
• Bobowler – Liz Berry – Comments
• Playing with words – A Wislawa Szymborska poem
• The Joy of Writing – Wislawa Szymborska – Analysis
• Epitaph on a Friend – Robert Burns
• ‘Floating’ – Marking the 21st Anniversary – SIEV X Tragedy
• Lana Turner has collapsed – Frank O’Hara
• The Day is Done – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Analysis
• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d – Walt Whitman
• Machines – Michael Donaghy – Analysis
• I am the great sun – Charles Causley – Analysis
• The Liverpool Poets – Roger McGough – Comeclose and Sleepnow
• The Birds – Philip Hodgins – Comments
• The Eagle – Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Gratitude to Old Teachers – Robert Bly – Comments
• Lost words of Shelley – The Existing State of Things – Politics
• On love and domestic life – Vikram Seth
• Living – Denise Levertov – Analysis
• It happens all the time in heaven – Hafiz – Comments
• The Third Body – Robert Bly – Analysis
• South of My Days – Judith Wright – Analysis
• Ilya Kaminsky – ‘Deaf Republic’ – the Ukraine War
• Some ‘Reunion’ Words
• Election Day in Australia – The Political Environment
• Places of Poetry – A UK Poetry Society Anthology
• The Day Lady Died – Frank O’Hara – Comments
• A Poem from the Iona Community by Peter Millar
• Nevertheless – An Easter Poem
• ‘The word’ Nevertheless – Michael Thwaites
• Separation – Colin Campbell Analysis
• Vitai Lampada – Henry Newbolt – Comments
• Yussouf – James Russell Lowell – Analysis
• Canberra Day: Some Les Murray Words
• Stubbing Wharfe – Ted Hughes – Analysis
• A Message to my Granddaughters
• A Message to my Grandson – Michael Thwaites – Comments
• To Lucasta, Going to the Wars – Richard Lovelace – Comments
• The World Peace Bell – Canberra
• Australia Day – A Personal Poem
• The Hawk in the Rain – Ted Hughes – Analysis
• Requiem – Robert Louis Stevenson
• Piano – D. H. Lawrence – Analysis
• Tell me not – A New Year Poem
• Sharing a Christmas Letter …
• Performance – Les Murray – Comments
• The Christmas Word – An Advent Poem
• The Moon and the Yew Tree – Sylvia Path – Comments
• ‘No Bull’ – A personal encounter
• Everyone Sang – Siegfried Sassoon
• Ancient Egyptian Love Poems – John L Foster translator
• Surprised by Joy – William Wordsworth – comments
• Watercolour of Grantchester Meadows – Sylvia Plath – comments
• The Thought-Fox – Ted Hughes – Analysis
• The Trees – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning – John Donne
• Canberra Can – Canberra Speaking
• Sunlight on the Garden – Louis MacNeice – Analysis
• The Bright Field – R. S. Thomas – Analysis
• A Wife’s Protest – Ada Cambridge
• A Mother’s Answer – Louisa Lawson
• The Poetry Cat – Neva Kastelic – Comments
• Photograph of Me Holding the Cat – Janet Frame – Comments
• My heart leaps up … Wordsworth – comments
• The Icicles – Janet Frame – Comments
• Footnotes on a timeline – Ellen Van Neerven – Commentary
• After great pain – Emily Dickinson
• Depression: A personal poem
• In Jerusalem – Mahmoud Darwish – Analysis
• Memorial day for the war dead. Yehuda Amichai – Analysis
• Mental Issues and Poetry – Ted Hughes
• We are going – Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) Comments
• The Bridge – Ruth Pitter – Comments
• Mrs Lazarus – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis
• This is my letter to the world – Emily Dickinson – Analysis
• ‘1. Peace’ – Rupert Brooke – Analysis
• Frost at Midnight – Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Analysis
• ‘Since the majority of me’ – Philip Larkin – Comments
• Easter again – the forever day
• The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks: Paula Meehan – Comments
• Anointing Ann Anonymous – Recognition and Beauty
• Beauty and John Keats – Endymion
• The Sun Rising – John Donne – Comments
• Morte D’Arthur – Epilogue – Tennyson – Comments
• My Mother’s Teeth – A. K. S. Shaw
• Death of a Son – Jon Silkin – Analysis
• Pelicans – Judith Wright – Analysis
• Old Age Gets Up – Ted Hughes – Comments
• In the Valley of Cauteretz – Tennyson
• Hope – via Emily Dickinson
• ‘Get Real Man’ – The Christmas Gift
• ‘Some Crazy God’ – A Christmas Poem
• The Journey of the Magi – T. S. Eliot – Analysis
• ‘Recovery Steps’ – blue sky ahead?
• Clancy of the Overflow – Banjo Paterson
• Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram – Jennifer Strauss – Analysis
• Skinnydipping – Murray Hartlin – Humour
• Ithaca – C. P. Cavafy – Comments
• The Galley-Rowers – John Masefield
• Today – Billy Collins – Comments
• The Wild Iris – Louise Gluck – Analysis
• Dead Musicians – Siegfried Sassoon – Analysis
• Elevation – a poem on the virus
• Football – Kate Llewellyn – Comments
• Three elements of Hebrew Poetry – Poetry Creation
• Suzanne – Leonard Cohen – Lyrics – Analysis
• ‘Ulladulla Fun Run’ – Fun Run History – Prostate Cancer
• False Prophet – Bob Dylan – Analysis
• My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night – Anthony Lawrence – Analysis
• Donal Og – Lady Augusta Gregory – Comments
• Days – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• When you are old – W. B. Yeats – Comments
• Contrast – Emily Dickinson
• Colour Blind – Lemn Sissay – Analysis
• The Nature of Love – Rabindranath Tagore – Comments
• The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats – comments
• Golden Island Shopping Centre – Paul Durcan – Comments
• Description of an idea – Bruce Dawe – Analysis
• Timothy Winters – Charles Causley – Comments
• Eavan Boland – Tribute – ‘And Soul’
• The Snow Man – Wallace Stevens – Comments
• Demain, dès l’aube – Victor Hugo
• Pluck – Eva Dobell – some ANZAC Day words
• When All The Others Were Away at Mass – Seamus Heaney – Analysis
• Easter Sunday Sunrise
• Emily Dickinson on Facebook – Pamela Milne
• And the people stayed home – Kitty O’Meara
• The Afternoon Sun – C P Cavafy – Analysis
• Being Infectious – a personal exchange!
• Smile – A one Word Poem
• The Mower – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• O thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind- John Keats – Analysis
• The Waking – Theodore Roethke – Analysis
• Fidelity – D. H. Lawrence
• IF – Rudyard Kipling – Comments
• Awash in Smoke – Australian Bushfires
• Angels – Mary Oliver – Comments
• Smoke – Michael Symmons Roberts – Comments
• The Darkling Thrush – Thomas Hardy – Analysis
• Magical Memories – Christmas reflections
• Days – Philip Larkin – Comments
• An Apology – F. J. Bergmann – Comments
• A tribute to Clive James
• Bright Star – John Keats – Analysis
• Moon – Janette Pieloor – Analysis
• The Gods – Victor Daley – Analysis
• Stillborn – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• In Passing – Stanley Plumly – Analysis
• Leisure – William Henry Davies – Analysis
• A Hymn to God The Father – John Donne – Comments
• Spring Sonnet – Vivaldi (The Four Seasons)
• The World Is Too Much with Us – Wordsworth – Comments
• Nationality – Mary Gilmore – Analysis
• Animal Accident – A personal encounter
• I saw the beauty go – Mary Gilmore – Analysis
• Places, Loved Ones – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• Humour and Ogden Nash
• In Memory of Basil, Marquess of Dufferin and Ava – John Betjeman
• Lady Lazarus – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Responding to Shakespeare – Emotional Extremes
• Love – George Herbert – Analysis
• The Span of Life – Robert Frost – Analysis
• We Are Seven – William Wordsworth
• At the end of two months’ … – Stephen Spender – Analysis
• The Meaning of Existence – Les Murray
• Goodnight – Shelley
• Nurse no longer grief – Mary Gilmore
• i thank you God – e e cummings – analysis
• Fall – Mary Oliver – Analysis
• Les Murray: A Tribute
•  The Company of Lovers – Judith Wright – ANZAC Day
• Easter Hymn – A. E. Housman
• Being Optimistic – Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
• Walking Away – Cecil Day-Lewis – Analysis
• Marmalade and Vegemite – A Retired Couple Issue
• My Shadow – Robert Louis Stevenson – Comments
• The Hour is Lost – John Shaw Neilson – Comments
• Sonnet V – Edna St. Vincent Millay – Comments
• Love’s Coming – John Shaw Neilson – Analysis
• It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free – Wordsworth – Comments
• Why I Wake Early – Mary Oliver – A tribute
• Red Rock Headland
• Old Botany Bay – Mary Gilmore
• To His Coy Mistress – Andrew Marvell
• The Sunne Rising – John Donne
• The Pains of Sleep – Coleridge – Prayer
• My Christmas Letter 2018 – First Edition
• Country Towns – Kenneth Slessor – Analysis
• The Orange Tree – John Shaw Neilsen – Analysis
• The humour of Ogden Nash
• Mrs Reece Laughs – Martin Armstrong – Commentary
• Futility – Wilfred Owen – Remembrance Day 2018
• Snow – Louis MacNeice – Analysis
• Wintering -Sylvia Plath
• Leda’s Story – Diane Fahey
• Wuthering Heights – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Loveliest of trees … A. E. Housman (carpe diem)
• Yesterday and Today
• ‘Poetry on the Move’ – Festival 2018 – Canberra – Prize Winner
• Sonnet to Beauty – Lola Ridge – Analysis
• A right to be heard – Zelda Quakawoot – Comments
• Sea-Fever – John Masefield – Comments
• Mirror – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Never again would birds’ songs be the same – Robert Frost
• The Most of It – Robert Frost – Analysis
• At the Blind Bend
• One Art – Elizabeth Bishop – Analysis
• Excerpt from ‘Aurora Leigh’ – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Comments
• God’s Education – Thomas Hardy – Comments
• Poetical Aspirations – John Keats (Sleep and Beauty)
• Meeting at Night – Robert Browning – Analysis
• Recognition – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis
• Good and Clever – Elizabeth Wordsworth – Comments
• Invictus – William Ernest Henley
• Journey into the interior – Theodore Roethke
• Felix Randal – Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Drowning is not so pitiful – Emily Dickinson
• Garden Eyes – ‘My Word in Your Ear’ Poetry Collection
• War Baby – Pamela Holmes
• My Home – Clive James – Analysis
• Would I might find my country – Roland Robinson – Comments
• At Shagger’s Funeral – Bruce Dawe – Analysis
• God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley Hopkins
• When my love swears – Sonnet 138 – Shakespeare
• The Generosity – Luci Shaw – Comments
• Leaving Nancy – Eric Bogle
• Colour – Dorothea Mackellar – Analysis
• Seed – Paula Meehan – Analysis
• The Garden of Love – William Blake – Analysis
• Lovesick – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis
• The Fly – William Blake – Analysis
• The Red Cockatoo – Po Chu-I – Comments
• The Express – Stephen Spender – Commentary
• Portrait of a Machine : Louis Untermeyer
• Christmas Day – A Fibonacci Poem
• Christmas Time – time to enjoy …
• Little Jack Horner – Discussion
• Framed in a first-storey winder … Anonymous
• Digging – Seamous Heaney – Analysis
• Nasturtiums – Margaret Scott – Analysis
• China – wise sayings and concise words
• Remembering Sylvia … ‘Poppies in October’ …
• Bowled Over – Ted Hughes – Analysis
• The Conclusion of Joseph Turrill – Andrew Motion – Analysis
• Love after Love – Derek Walcott – Analysis
• The Human Seasons – John Keats – Comments
• The Snow Village – Glyn Maxwell – Analysis
• ‘Poetry on the Move’- Canberra 2017
• Walking Away – Cecil Day-Lewis – Comments
• Adlestrop – Edward Thomas – Comments
• Adam and Eve – Paradise Ignored
• Imperial Adam – A. D. Hope : Comments
• Shelley’s Preface to Prometheus Unbound
• ‘Tsanga’ – Book Launch Poem
• Man on the Moon – Stephen Edgar – Analysis
• Buried in pixels
• Because – James McAuley – Analysis
• An Inevitable
• Cut – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Continuum – Allen Curnow – Analysis
• Influence of the Internet, influence of poetry …
• An Unseen – Carol Ann Duffy – Comments
• The Unlucky Christ – Peter Porter – Analysis
• Sentenced to Life – Clive James – Analysis
• Extra-terrestrial Report – Michael Thwaites
• Words and Philosophy of Virginia Woolf
• Easter Sunday – 2017 – Edmund Spenser
• Forgetfulness: Billy Collins
• Westminster Bridge and Wordsworth
• A Small Story – Peter Everwine – Analysis
• Dance Me to the End of Love – Leonard Cohen – Analysis
• Mending Wall – Robert Frost – Analysis
• When I was one and twenty – A. E. Housman
• Tho’ hid in spiral myrtle Wreath – Coleridge
• since feeling is first – e e cummings – analysis
• ‘Not waving but drowning’ – Stevie Smith -Analysis
• Retirement Arrival – A warning to drivers!
• Warning – Jenny Joseph – Comments
• Crossing the water- Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• ‘The Prelude’ William Wordsworth – Nature
• Christmas Greetings to all
• The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot
• A Song for Simeon – T. S. Eliot – Analysis
• A Subaltern’s Love Song – John Betjeman – Analysis
• Visitant – A. D. Hope – Analysis
• A Poem Just For Me – Roger McGough – Comments
• Ant, Fish and Angel – John Blight – Comments
• The Summer Day – Mary Oliver – Comments
• The Poor, Poor Country – John Shaw Neilson
• Originally – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis
• Death in Leamington – John Betjeman – Analysis
• Two ‘Voices’ – Cavafy
• IPSI Festival Canberra – Poetry and Place – Simon Armitage
• Birds – Judith Wright – Analysis
• In Church – Thomas Hardy – Analysis
• Home After Three Months Away – Robert Lowell
• Moors – Ted Hughes – Analysis
• To a friend – Allen Curnow – Analysis
• A Jet Ring Sent – John Donne – Analysis
• Metaphors – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Silver – Walter de la Mare – Analysis
• Sonnet 15 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Analysis
• I Am – John Clare – Analysis
• Dead Nun – Nicola Bowery – Analysis
• Blue Moles – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• It’s All in a Name – FB Poetry
• Of the terrible doubt of appearances – Walt Whitman
• The Ash Plant – Seamus Heaney – Spirituality
• Looking at Limericks and Manipulation
• If I Could Tell You – W. H. Auden – Analysis
• Dedication to Valerie and Documentary – T. S. Eliot
• Bat Intrusion – Reporting from Batemans Bay
• Yes – Brian Patten – Analysis
• Richard – Carol Ann Duffy
• Gold Leaves – G. K. Chesterton – Analysis
• Easter is for the optimist
• Poetic Words from Sir Douglas Mawson
• Because I Liked You Better – A. E. Housman – Analysis
• Remembrance – Emily Bronte – analysis
• Lauding the Tomato
• may i feel – e e cummings – comments
• The Immortal Part – A. E. Housman -Comments
• Book Release – and the humble worm
• Piazza Piece – John Crowe Ransom
• Ode on the Poets – John Keats
• The Road through the Woods – Rudyard Kipling – Analysis
• Prayer – Carol Ann Duffy – Analysis
• In the Bleak Mid-Winter – Christina Rossetti
• Let us drink and be merry – Thomas Jordan
• The Second Coming – W. B. Yeats – Analysis
• Poetry and Influence
• Il pleure dans mon coeur – Paul Verlaine
• And Am to Pambula Come – Michael Farrell – Analysis
• Journey to the Interior – Margaret Atwood – Analysis
• Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines – Dylan Thomas – Analysis
• Closure on the life of a terrorist
• Marginalia – Billy Collins – Analysis
• The Moor – R. S. Thomas Analysis
• Fruhlingsglaube – Johann Ludwig Uhland and Schubert
• Cats – Arthur Tessimond – Comments
• Beach Burial – Kenneth Slessor – Analysis
• The Clear Air of October – Robert Bly – Analysis
• The Divine Comedy – Looking into Heaven – Clive James
• Revolution (in the way we view creation)
• William Blake – Looking at his philosophy
• Morning Song – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• You’re – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Executive – John Betjeman – Analysis
• The History Teacher – Billy Collins – Analysis
• The Clod and the Pebble – William Blake – Analysis
• I remember, I remember – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• The Flame Tree – Judith Wright – Comments
• Growing Poetry – Oranges and Lemons?
• I ask you – Billy Collins
• Japanese Maple – Clive James – Comments
• ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ – contemplation of text
• The Trains – Judith Wright – Analysis – ANZAC Day
• The Weather Dictates? – and from New Zealand …
• Black Rook in Rainy Weather – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• OMG Just Imagine – Easter Sunday
• Sharing some ‘Good Friday’ words
• The Poet, The Poem – George Mackay Brown
• Autumn is always afternoon
• May – John Shaw Neilson – Analysis
• The Last Word – Matthew Arnold – Analysis
• Love and Complacency – Geoffrey Dutton – Analysis
• A Dante Poem on Love and Beauty
• Summer Sketches: Sydney – Vivian Smith – Analysis
• Terra Australis – James McCauley – and Clive James
• The Whitsun Weddings – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• Dover Beach – Matthew Arnold – Analysis
• Passengers are reminded – Melinda Smith – Analysis
• Not just a birthday! – Some Christmas Day Words 2014
• The Latest Forecast – Predicting Life
• Summer – Judith Wright : Analysis
• Christmas is coming
• The Uncertainty of the Poet – Wendy Cope – Analysis
• Feeling a little ‘mimsy’ perhaps? – Lewis Carroll
• Life After Death – Pindar – Remembrance Day
• An Arundel Tomb – Philip Larkin – Analysis
• Only Two Lips – A Spring Poem
• U3A – Art/Poetry/Music Exhibition – Promoting Poetry
• London Rain – Louis MacNeice
• New Fruit – Ann Drysdale
• A White Blank Wall – A poem in a public place
• The Silken Tent – Robert Frost
• Bimbo – Bruce Dawe
• The Listeners – Walter de la Mare – Analysis
• The Broad Bean Sermon – Les Murray – Analysis
• Love’s Arithmetic – Catullus
• Dead Poets Readings – Canberra 2014
• Fern Hill – Dylan Thomas – Analysis
• Yesterday and Today
• Hospital for Defectives – Thomas Blackburn
• Inversnaid – Gerard Manley Hopkins
• To Time – An early Sylvia Plath Sonnet
• Winter Sea – Caseys Beach
• Winter – Shakespeare – Analysis
• Douglas Stewart – Scribbly Gum – Analysis
• Shelley and the Moon
• P. B. Shelley – Philosophy from his Poetry
• Love’s Philosophy – P. B. Shelley
• When I am in doubt – Glenn Colquhoun
• The Fragrance at Flanders – Anzac Day 2014
• A Fixed Idea – Amy Lowell
• Some Easter Words
• Eli, Eli – Judith Wright
• Digesting the Seasons
• Haiku and Tanka – Text to mull and dwell
• The Guttural Muse – Seamus Heaney
• To Keep a True Lent – Robert Herrick
• Musee de Beaux Arts – W. H. Auden
• Of Language – Mary Gilmore
• ‘Words’ – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• W B Yeats – on his philosophy
• The Walk – Thomas Hardy
• Arab Love-Song – Francis Thompson
• Some Words and Philosophy – Virginia Woolf
• No Coward Soul is Mine – Emily Bronte
• Reviewing Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
• Words Remembering Jane Austen
• Seeking Perfection – St John of the Cross
• Report Card – 2013
• Some Christmas Words for 2013
• Nativity – James McAuley
• International Poetry Competition – University of Canberra
• Shakespeare Sonnet 37 – Analysis
• Contrast – Emily Dickinson
• Disabled – Wilfred Owen
• Delight in Disorder – Robert Herrick
• The colour of Sylvia Plath
• The Tuft of Flowers – Robert Frost
• Cherry-Ripe – A period piece – Thomas Campion
• Perhaps the greatest love story
• Squaring up to the Sonnet
• A Mother-In-Law Problem (the original)
• Important lines from Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’
• Finding Happiness
• Judith Beveridge on Poetry and Spirituality …
• Don’t drown in thought – Just Do it!
• Promising Heaven at a Heavy cost
• A Religious Selection
• Mad Girl’s Love Song – Sylvia Plath – Analysis
• Your essential words – Example: Teilhard De Chardin
• Poetry Annoys
• Do not go gentle into that good night – Dylan Thomas
• International Poetry Studies Institute – Canberra University
• Rugby – A Mysterious Lass : Matt Laffan
• ANZAC Day in Australia
• The Wattle Tree – Judith Wright
• Varadero en Alba – Richard Blanco – Commentary
• One Today – Richard Blanco – Commentary
• Be inspired by Christ
• The Breaking of the Drought
• How to enjoy poetry …
• Guidance from Above
• Canberra Century Birth
• I Identified
• Canberra Centenary – ‘The Invisible Thread’
• Christmas has come and gone …
• Thomas Hardy Country – Images from a visit in 2012
• Olympic Rivalry – OZ / GB
• What makes best…
• On the Diamond Jubilee
• Link … Looking at Prufrock
• … and some more creativity following Christmas …
• December … a creative month
• Don’t have a NICE day …
• A Door to Poetry
• Broken Words
• Have an ‘Orange Tree’ Day
• Time for another word …
• My first word to the World!